Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A Soviet spy at Los Alamos

“He had access to everything,” said Dr. Kramish, who worked with Dr. Koval at Oak Ridge and now lives in Reston, Va. “He had his own Jeep. Very few of us had our own Jeeps. He was clever. He was a trained G.R.U. spy.” That status, he added, made Dr. Koval unique in the history of atomic espionage, a judgment historians echo.

Washington has known about Dr. Koval’s spying since he fled the United States shortly after the war but kept it secret.

“It would have been highly embarrassing for the U.S. government to have had this divulged,” said Robert S. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb,” a biography of the project’s military leader.

2
Comments:

Wow. This sounds amazing, but I would hold out on my opinion until historians judge the veracity and value of Koval's espionage attempts. I don't recall any mention of Koval in Richard Rhodes's meticulous and fascinating account of Soviet espionage in "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb".